first day of fall

Happy first day of fall! While summer is my favorite season, I do admit that fall can be beautiful. 

Fall gets a little depressing for me though because my oldest son, Philip passed away on September 25th (2009). My dad, grandpa and mother-in-law also all passed away in the fall. I also hate seeing all the flowers dying and perennials withering, packing away all the summer yard decor and covering up the patio furniture...all reminders that the dreaded winter is right around the corner. (Ignore the bag of potting soil, plant pots and gardening gloves lying on the porch. I repotted several houseplants today.)

But back to the good stuff: Brian bought wood and stained it, and built a raised bed in back of the house for an herb garden. I had herbs back there in the ground for years, including mint, which I was always having to prune and dig out. The little area served us well during the past years, but with the french drains being put in the ground a few months ago (you can see one of the drains behind Brian), the area was looking scraggly. And I was sick of taming the mint. So Brian dug out all the herbs except for what I wanted to save ~ chives and red veined sorrel. I'll plant other herbs next spring.

Some color still abounds around the yard. Black-eyed Susan in the butterfly garden is drying up, but still lovely.

Plenty of color on the north side of the house with hosta blooms, coleus and impatiens.

I picked the last of our tomatoes today ~ even the green ones ~ and roasted them until they were saucy. Added to my pot of chili for dinner.

Another snapshot of my day: Clementine is my loyal companion. She follows me all over the house. I was making dinner, so she had to supervise, of course.

Even though it was warm and sunny today, I was craving chili. I don't use a recipe. This is my own creation. I taste and add things as I go along, though I do use some basics: half ground turkey, half ground beef (organic, grass-fed), onions, red and orange bell pepper, poblano pepper, garlic, a can of black beans, tomato sauce, dark beer, a little chicken broth, seasonings (chili powder, cumin, Mexican oregano, salt, pepper, chipotle red pepper), a tablespoon of cocoa powder. I doubled my usual recipe so that I could bring a container to a friend whose Significant Other just got home from the hospital.

Whatever you choose to do this weekend to celebrate the Autumn Equinox, I hope it brings you joy.

PS ~ still having trouble with my blog header. Designed a simple graphic through a website (can't even remember which one now), but I can't get it to center. That's what I get for using a freebie site, I suppose. I'm still not wanting to pay for a photo editing site since I will rarely use it, but I might have to bite the bullet.

so much autumn goodness

Hello! 

Sorry the long delay in my posts. I've missed you all.

It is just now starting to get cold here. We've been lucky. My coleus, herb garden and even some annuals are still going strong. We had our first frost warning last night, but it didn't happen. Will definitely happen this weekend though - it's going down to 28 degrees Saturday night. I'm going to bring those geraniums inside and hope for the best with over-wintering them.

I celebrated the fall equinox (belated) at my First Best Friend's house. She has dinners to celebrate the start of every season. It's always the same small (anywhere from 5-10) group of ladies, all of whom have become very dear to me over the years. I just wish I lived closer to these women. They all live in Chicago, which is over an hour's drive from my house. Most of them still have kids at home; some work outside the home; a couple of others are single moms. Everyone is busy! These dinner gatherings are the perfect time for all of us to put our busyness aside for a few hours and take deep breaths, relax, and truly enjoy each other's company. We talk, laugh and cry late into the night.

Another slice of fall joy...spending time with my mom and aunt at the Autumn Drive. An annual fest held out in the country, we walked around to different farms and explored antiques and crafts and tons of pumpkins and squash and petted sweet dogs that rescue groups were walking around. 

Library book sales are going on in full force around here this time of year. You might recall that I cleaned out hundreds of books this past April. So now if I even go to a library book sale, all I look for is certain cookbooks, particular decorating books, and authors whose work I'm looking for in fiction and non-fiction. I don't bring any books home just because they look like a good read. As soon as I'm done looking through the cookbooks, I will pass them on.

This past weekend, I took a class at a neighboring Buddhist Temple. The building is 150 years old and so beautiful. I loved the monument outside where on one side it said, "Let Peace Prevail on Earth" and on the other, "May Peace Be in Our Communities." Interestingly enough, the upstairs sanctuary has stained glass windows with Jesus, Mary and an angel depicted on them. I'm not sure if the windows were there when the building previously belonged to a Unitarian Church, but the monk has said (and I'm quoting from an article in The Northwest Herald dated July 24, 2015), "The windows make some of the temple visitors more comfortable with meditation." And, "In this building, we are not teaching religions. We are teaching meditation, how to be happy. How to calm down. And Jesus and Buddha they are both very spiritual teachers." What a beautiful, loving philosophy! 

Some last minute antique shopping today. Me, my mom and aunt were texting this morning and those bad women asked to meet up for lunch and a quick trip to one of our favorite shops. Even though I was going to run some errands today, had a ton of laundry to do, was in the middle of writing this blog post, and was planning on making a pot of homemade soup this afternoon, I was off and running. ;-)

Just like with books, I am pretty judicious about what I bring into the house nowadays. It has to be something I can truly use, or else be so pretty that I can't pass it up. I found this Rowe Pottery plant pot for only $8. Found completed listings on eBay for $30 - $35. And I did need this plant pot. I have a plant in my office/yoga room that is still sitting in its original crappy plastic pot. I've been wanting to repot this plant, but couldn't find a small plant pot that I liked. Until today.

(Image found here)

'Til next time...

xoxo